This was one of my favorite threads on the old board, and since I haven't seen it posted on the new board yet, I thought this would be a fun thread, especially in light of the serious times and problems we all have to cope with these days. Let's lighten up a little with this one and have some fun!

OK: here are a few funny things students have said recently in the classroom:

1. "I want to cook you." (I told her I'm too skinny and she'd better choose someone with a little more 'meat' on his bones.)

2. "John's wearing green sh*t." (um, she forgot the letter "r", and John didn't like it one bit.)

3. "I rike praying" (from a young boy in Japan who apparently enjoys going to Church.)

4. "I sing with a hoar on weekends." (In Russia, the word 'choir' is pronounced 'hoar'. I swear!) I told her not to quit her day job.

So, come on now people and make me laugh!

PS: The new board has 4-letter-word filtering, so you may need to be extra creative when spelling certain ... um, er ... 'descriptive' words.

I was teaching descriptive adjectives associated with apartments and homes. One of the words in the text was "shabby". The first time I said it produced giggles in my "back of the classroom" kids. I said the word several times during the course of the lesson. Each time students laughed. I was mystified. After class one of my more daring students came up to me and explained that "sha bi" in Chinese meant pretty much the same thing as that English expletive that rhymes with truck. We had some fun with that over the next couple of classes.

When I was in Japan, I was teaching the employees of a doctor's office some basic English phrases so that they could deal with foreign patients.

My favorite pronuniciation was: "Please s*it here." I decided it was better if she said, "Please take a seat." Of course, this ended up sounding like "Please take a sheet," but at least no one would be offended

In a junior high school class, we were talking about parts of the body, and the class kept giggling whenever I said "chin."

When I asked my husband about it when I went home that day, he told me that "chin-chin" is Japanese slang for the, uh, male organ.

As you probably know,Japanese have difficulty
pronouncing the letters l and r.
This coming Sunday there is an election in Japan.
When I hear my students talk about this of course
they say the word election but when they say it
the l is replaced with the letter r.
It cracks me up every time.

In Japan, the mention of a Toyota Clown (Crown) car put images in my head of seemingly endless Japanese exiting the car, decked out in the obligatory plaid suit, red nose, floppy shoes, and squirting boutonniere.

In Paris, "travesty" came up as vocab. My student was quite taken aback. She explained to me that "travesti(e)" en francais means "transvestite".

Another from Paris:
"What did you do over the holidays?"
"I went to the b*tch." (beach)

Student of mine in Japan showed me a letter from her sister in Texas. She had been there less than a year and was very excited about the Presidential choices for office that year. She wrote in English, "I can't wait to watch the President's e r e c t i o n." This was the year Clinton got into office.

For some reason, the word focus is difficult for Spanish speakers to pronounce. It often comes out sounding like fuccus. In our old textbooks each unit had a section called Focus on Grammar. I'd become used to my students' pronunciation, so that I'd simply correct by repeating the word pronouncing it correctly without cracking up at their pronunciation.

One day a couple of university exchange students from the U.S. were observing one of my classes. After I'd done a short warm-up activity with my class, I asked if there were any things they wanted to review from the previous lesson before we started on something new. Two or three students raised their hands.

I acknowledged the first student who'd raised his hand and said, "Yes, Eduardo, what can I do for you today?"

Eduardo responded loudly and clearly with, "Fuccus on Grammar."

At that point the two exchange students simply lost it. They had to step out of the room for a few minutes to regain their composure.

So Ben; did you fuc-him good on grammar??? I, for one, sure hope so. Absolutely hilarious Thanks people, and keep 'em coming. I haven't laughed so hard since ... since ... since reading Cheryl's wacky post on finding a good man. And remember, "Life's a beach. If you want a friend, buy a dog!" Not too shabby, eh ??

I work at two schoolson rotation. One week at one school, and one week the other.
I was at school number 2 and had cause to call school number 1. This is how the conversation went.

Me "Hi, this is John Smith, can I speak to Mr Lee please"
Receptionist " John Smith is not here this week"
Me "No, I am John Smith, can I speak to Mr Lee please"
Rec.."Sorry, John Smith is at school number 2"
Me "I am John Smith, I want to talk to Me Lee"
Rec.."Oh, would you like the number for school number 2, John Smith is at school number two this week"

Before starting a poem about friends I did a warm up exercise of asking the students what friends do together. The students were 7years old.
One answer was " They sleep together". I looked at my co teacher with a cheeky smile, thinking that the comment was innocent.
Later they did a board rush and wrote down their answers on the board. One of the written answers was "sleep together" Smiling I rubbed the answer off and said that friends normally did not sleep together. Too which the reply came "Yes they do..and then they have babies"

In a first lesson with two young students I had no idea of their listening skills or basic vocab, and they seemed a little nervous. So I played a little game where by I said a shape and they wrote the shape on the board.
So I did square, circle etc. After several shapes they began to look at each a little puzzled before each shape and I thought that now I was stretching their vocab/listening a little far..After a couple more shapes one of the students looked at me like Iwas completley mad and said "I can draw you a parrallogram if you like"

I was teaching a very very beautiful young lady from a province in China called fujian. The canonese (the local dialect in Hong Kong) way of pronouncing this word is "fucin" The c has a k sound.

Beautiful Student "Do you know fucin?"
Me "er"
Beautiful Student " I know fucin very well?"
Me "er"
Beautiful Student " Would you like me to teach you some fucin?"
Me ..unable to speak or think..only dribble slightly from the side of my mouth!!

So, are we finished already? Are we the only ones on Dave's out of nearly 2,000 members who spend countless hours each day laughing over the funny things students say in class?

I had hoped we'd get at least as many posts as the "Good Men" - "Good Women" threads!

OK: One more funny language anecdote from me to stir your comedic passions: (This is not from the classroom, but it's still a hilarious illustration of how we all manage to mangle foreign languages from time to time.)

An American Company which markets a womens' perfume called "Evening Mist" decided they would expand their marketing program into the European marketplace. First stop: Germany. The American executives are all seated around the big oak table with their German counterparts in the posh executive boardroom. One of them stands up and unveils a glossy, billboard-sized poster of this new and sexy perfume called "Evening Mist" ... and the Germans nearly fall off their chairs laughing.

Can you imagine this scenario? "Here you are honey! I've bought you something very special to celebrate our deep love. It's a bottle of Cow Sh*t!. Why don't you spray a little behind your ears right now. I'm feeling very romantic ..." mooooooo.

The moral of the story? 'Mist' is not always a foggy and mysterious, dew-covered lawn in the morning.

Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2003 7:10 am Post subject: Did you hear the one about the student teacher?

Here's a little tale related to me by one of my professors. It comes from her time teaching at an all-girls high school in Japan.

One day the principal (I think it was), a Japanese woman who had studied in the U.S. and had a near-native accent, told Jane (my instructor) that she had a student teacher who needed some practice teaching time. Could they borrow Jane's class for a day and would Jane observe? But of course.

The student teacher was Japanese and spoke English with a very pronounced accent but was understandable. Jane and two other teachers (also from the US) sat in the back and watched with the principal as she got her lesson underway.

Student teacher produced a stuffed dog from her bag and placed him on the desk. "Where is the dog?" she asked the class then answered herself: "The dog is sh*tting on the desk." She moved him to a chair. "Where is the dog sh*tting now? He is sh*tting in my chair. Repeat after me..." And so they did but Jane taught her students too well--they always said sitting.

It went on like that for about an hour with the dog sh*tting here, sh*tting there, sh*tting everywhere. Jane and the other two teachers examined the ceiling, the floor, the walls, everything but each other's faces to keep from laughing as the principal sat quietly fuming. At the end of the hour, the girls left and the principal took the student teacher aside. "Miss So & So," she said sternly, "do you know what that word means?"

when I was first introduced to teaching here I was told to avoid using certain words like sick instead of ill it has a much ruder meaning even the seemingly &#305;nnoncent " I'm" is taboo and never call a peach by its name and when you have names like Fatih and Ufuk and one of my old students had a surname pronounced s*?t totally unaware of the mirth it caused you can see there was always going to be jolly fun in the classroom .I'm sure others over here can add to this .